Polls showing President Donald Trump with record low approval ratings are not “fake news,” an analysis into the methodology of such surveys has suggested.

The Pew Research Center released findings Friday showing that there was no significant difference between the results of telephone surveys and anonymous internet polls. Possible reluctance of respondents to voice support for Trump has frequently been cited as a possible reason that pre-election opinion polling, and post-election surveys, may have underestimated support for the Republican.

Since the vast majority of opinion polls and data predictions failed to foresee a Trump victory over Hillary Clinton last November, Trump has fiercely criticized polling as part of a general attack on the mainstream media. Undermining the credibility of polls makes political sense, given that his approval rating last week reached 35 percent, according to Gallup, by some distance the lowest figure recorded for a newly elected president.

Tweeting in February, Trump said that “any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.”

Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

Gallup’s polling is conducted by telephone, whereas some others, such as those by Reuters/Ipsos and CBS, were based on internet surveys. The most recent internet surveys showed slightly higher approval numbers for Trump.

Pew’s survey experiment, comparing the responses to 27 questions, also found that the web mode yielded results that were, on average, 1.8 percentage points more supportive of Trump and his policies. However, it concluded that the experiment “did not find significant mode differences in overall opinion about Trump or many of his key signature policy positions.”

Senator Bob Menendez said he was "disappointed, but not surprised, that the Trump administration has failed once again to prioritize our long-term national security interests or stand up for human rights."